The present invention relates to an apparatus and method for efficiently and safely raising and transporting poultry, such as chickens and turkeys, from the time they leave a brooder until reaching maturity.
In the past several decades poultry production has evolved from small family farm operations to large businesses devoted solely to the production of poultry. These large poultry processors commonly raise several million birds each year, and while the technology of slaughtering and processing poultry for sale has changed dramatically, the methods and apparatus employed in raising poultry have changed very little. Thus, most poultry growers today use the same general methods and apparatus previously used on small farms, only on a far bigger scale.
Conventionally, when poultry are removed from the brooder, the birds are placed in large, open, one-story buildings where they are fed and maintained until they reach maturity six to nine weeks later. Usually the birds stand directly on the floor of the building upon a bed of litter, such as sawdust or wood shavings, which absorbs droppings. When the birds reach maturity, laborers are sent into the buildings to catch each bird individually and place it into a small cage with several other birds. Several hundred of the cages are then placed on a truck for transport to a processing plant.
Once the poultry are removed from the building, it is prepared for the next group of birds by cleaning the litter and droppings together with dead and infirm birds from the floor, and then covering the floor with a clean layer of litter.
The above described procedure for raising and transporting poultry presents several serious and persistent problems. For example, the type of building employed makes inefficient use of vertical space, since the birds are raised on only one level. These buildings also provide an unsanitary environment for the birds, and the accumulation of droppings on the floor promotes disease and thereby increases costs by slowing the rate of weight gain and reducing the number of birds available for marketing. Further, the buildings are difficult to keep clean and require expensive and scarce manual labor for the cleaning process.
Manual labor is also required in capturing the birds for placement in cages prior to shipment to a processing plant. The general undesirability of the job makes it difficult and expensive to find and keep employees. Also, the manual handling of the birds results in many birds being injured or bruised in the process, thus reducing their grade and value.
Prior attempts have been made to solve the problems outlined above, such as the multi-level enclosures for raising poultry as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,197,160, issued Apr. 16, 1940 and U.S. Pat. No. 2,212,549, issued Aug. 27, 1950. While the structures disclosed in these patents utilize space more efficiently and improve sanitation, they still require repeated manual handling of the birds with resulting injuries and bruises to the birds which characterizes the conventional poultry growing operations.
Likewise, prior proposals have been directed toward developing ways to reduce labor by providing mechanical means for loading poultry into cages for shipment to processing plants, as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,103,915, issued Sept. 17, 1963; 3,173,564, issued Mar. 16, 1965; 3,420,311, issued Jan. 7, 1969 and 3,568,643, issued Mar. 9, 1971. The devices disclosed in these patents are complex and expensive, and they still require some manual labor and therefore do not solve the problem of preventing injuries to the birds. Still further, a large stationary apparatus has been proposed for the preliminary rearing of livestock as disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,604,874, issued July 29, 1952, but obviously there is no possibility of transporting the livestock in the apparatus and thus the danger of injury to the livestock during loading into the transport cages remains a problem.